As a potluck dinner party
was winding down, we
were sitting in our friends’
living room last weekend
watching our children wind
up.
That happens when you
feed them a large meal of
protein, fruit and cobbler
with ice cream.
The children numbered
more than half a dozen. The
youngest were three and
the oldest were not yet out
of elementary school. In
other words, even one-onone,
these kids would have
been a force of nature.
Thrown together (and outnumbering
the adults present)
they had the potential
to become a perfect storm.
But they didn’t.
Sure, they raced around
the house, giggling, creating
little dramas and occasionally
shrieking in ways
that caused all the parents
to pause and decipher
whether the screams conveyed
great pain or great
joy.
But the adults were also
able to do something that
my husband and I seem to
find nearly impossible
when we’re evenly matched
with the children: We had
conversations with limited
interruptions.
It was glorious.
We were even able to
gather after supper in the
living room. Kim, our hostess,
pulled out her knitting
and worked on a project as
we talked. The children
raced in and out. They
made a circle in one corner
of the living room, playing
a game and making plans
that we adults were not
supposed to hear. They took
care of each other.
Someone said, ``Isn’t this
nice?’’
Not looking up from her
knitting, Kim pointed out
that perhaps humans were
meant to live like that — in
efficient groups that always
have enough adults to get
all the day’s work done, attend
to all the children’s
scrapes and dramas and
still have time for knitting
and talking at the end of
the day.
Now, I’m not ready to
move to the kibbutz quite
yet, but it really does make
sense.
If you visit the Fenimore
Art Museum, take a stroll
across the lawn toward the
lake. Walk down a path
that slips between tall,
green bushes and vines,
and down by the shore,
you’ll find the museum’s reproduction
of an Iroquois
longhouse.
To most modern sensibilities,
it most resembles a
military barracks, with
sleeping quarters lining the
walls and a long corridor
running the length.
That is where the similarities
end.
The Iroquois lived in
groups of 20-plus people in
these longhouses. Central
fire pits kept them warm.
During the days, the
women worked together to
farm the fields, care for the
children and keep the
household running. The
men worked together to
gather and hunt. They had
no concept of land as a commodity,
the way Europeans
did (and we do).
The Iroquois didn’t invent
the longhouse, a living
arrangement that archeologists
and anthropologists
say go back 6,000 or 7,000
years. Neolithic inhabitants
of Europe built them.
Vikings and Scandinavians
who lived in the countryside
built them. People living
in various corners of
Asia built them.
When you look at the
history we have of living
that way, it seems like a
brief experiment to keep
one house for every nuclear
family, a practice that goes
back just a couple hundred
years; only about 150 years
the way we do it now. It almost
seems downright
wasteful.
Think of all that human
labor that goes into keeping
all these individual houses
running.
Beyond the efficiency issue,
think of how differently
we might behave toward
each other if our definitions
of family were more expansive.
Think of how much
more compassionate, forgiving
and generous we
might be. Think of what it
might feel like to be on the
receiving end of that kind
of compassion, forgiveness
and generosity.
The only problem, as I
see it, is the line to get into
the shower every morning.
Elizabeth Trever Buchinger
was conceived in August
of the “Summer of
Love;” can you tell? You can
connect with her at www.
moremindfulfamily.wordpress.
com.
This Wonderful Life
July 24, 2009
This Wonderful Life: Forget the Village; Maybe It Just Takes a Big Family
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- This Wonderful Life: I wish someone had told me Disclaimer: Because my son more or less demanded that I stop using him and his life as material for my column back when he was 12 or 13, I want to make it perfectly clear to all my readers (and any legal professionals who are now retained or may be retained at some future time by aforementioned son) that this column is not about him. It’s about me. The fact that he happened to turn 21 on Saturday is mere coincidence. So help me God.
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